Really compounding the issue was that the AI also generated a pick of the week at a rate of 85 per cent accuracy over the 20-week period, yielding a massive 170 per cent return on investment.

The betting results came about by utilising a form of AI called “Swarm AI”.

Swarm AI is modelled after swarms in nature – such as fish, ants and birds – which are able to perform better as a group than as individuals.

Humans did not develop this ability to swarm through evolution, but we are now applying it to our technology.

Unanimous AI – the company behind the study – explain that Swarm AI “provides the interfaces and AI algorithms to enable ‘human swarms’ to converge online, combining the knowledge, wisdom, insights, and intuitions of diverse groups into a single emergent intelligence“.

“The results of this study are extremely promising,” said Gregg Willcox, director of research at Unanimous AI and a co-author of the paper.

“And while it’s fun to predict sports, we are currently applying the same techniques to a wide variety of other domains, including financial forecasting, business forecasting, and medical diagnosis, all with positive results.”

About the author

Joe was Junior Vice-President at Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net until it was bought out by Bill Gates. He now subedits for Conversant Media and considers it a step up.